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Pastimes : Computer Learning -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: wily who wrote (4034)	6/13/1999 3:25:00 PM
From: PMS Witch	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 110626

DOS, PowerQuest, Windows ... I find it hard to believe PowerQuest's stuff has made a mess of things. It seems to just make an copy of what it finds, or restores what was last saved. I never experienced it changing anything. About DOS commands. They come in two flavours: Internal and External. The internal commands are always available, because they are located in COMMAND.COM, which is the CCP, or Console Command Processor. (A term carried over from CP/M days!) Examples of internal commands are: DIR, COPY, MD, CD, and RD. External commands are invoked by the DOS first loading the appropriate executable image and passing control to it. Examples of external commands are: XCOPY, FORMAT, MORE, and SORT. The external command files are found at C:\WINDOWS\COMMAND on my machine. Here's the explanation part... For DOS to execute an external command, it must know where to find it. It checks the current directory first, then the directories indicated by the PATH environment variable. You can check your PATH if you type SET at the DOS prompt. (SET is an internal command) When MORE doesn't work, I'll bet your PATH string doesn't contain 'C:\WINDOWS\COMMAND' and it does contain this string when MORE does work. Locations along your 'PATH' are separated with semi-colons. It's a matter of when your system sets these environment variables. They don't get set for DOS Safe Mode. They usually get set for a DOS window, (I think it's the default) and at other times, it depends. Locations along your 'PATH' are separated with semi-colons. Hope this helps, PW. P.S. I've never called The Commander '.COM', he wouldn't get it.